“The Poem That is Like A City” by Fiona Farrell — Commemorating September 4, 2010 & the Earthquake Years

The poem that is like a city

This poem is like a city. It is full of words.Doing words. And Being words. And wordsthat compare one thing to another thingand words that hold everything together.This poem has a high rise at its centre witha view across the plains to the hills.It has a CBD and CEOs and a thousandacronyms whirring like wheels. Thispoem is going places. It also has smallprepositions where people pause, drinkcoffee and read the paper. They go toand from and sit before and behind.They walk across the park, crunchinglike gerunds on white gravel whilewatching dogs splashing. Ducks quackand rise. Like inflections? At the end ofphrases? The way we do here? Thispoem is a crowded street where wordsclatter in several languages and everything you see or touch has many names.This poem is written in the gold leaf offaith and in the red capitals of SALEand BUY NOW and all the people walkamong the words as if they were treesand ornament and would never fall offthe edges of their white page.

The poem jolts at the caesura and allthe words slide sideways, slip fromthe beam in dusty slabs. The childrenwho were learning how to say hullotap good bye good bye in all theirvoices, reaching in the dark for themother tongue. There is no word inEnglish for this. No word in anycity.

The poem is palimpsest, scrapedclean each morning and dumpedin the harbour. But at night it rises.The moon buttons back the dark ontower block, mall and steeple. Carsboom hollow on a phantom avenue,cups fill with froth and nothing andan empty bus wheezes up ColomboStreet. Stops for the children whoperch, waiting like similes forchatter and flight, tapping theirabbreviations.

About the Poet:

Fiona Farrell has published poetry, fiction, non-fiction and plays. In 2012 she received the ONZM* for Services to Literature. She is still trying to figure out how to write.

*Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit

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About The Poem:

The Earthquakes
Last week was September 4, the ninth anniversary of the 7.1 Canterbury earthquake that began a sustained eighteen months of earthquakes, with aftershocks well beyond that period. Many of the aftershocks were more than big enough to jolt hearts, wear spirits, and stretch nerves. Other events were earthquakes in their own right: February 22nd, June 13, and December 23, all in 2011.

During the main quake period, over 14,000 earthquakes were recorded and the major quakes caused widespread destruction. The February 22nd earthquake killed 185 people and injured many others. Large swathes of Christchurch remain affected and the region is still recovering physically. The mental health of the region’s population has also been badly affected, with significant increases in diagnoses recorded.

Under such circumstances, dates like September 4 are still significant. For many years, the imperative was to batten down and carry on, dealing with the destruction and negotiating everyday life in a compromised environment. Residents and businesses (the people working in them also residents) had to deal with the prolonged demands of insurance claims and the politics of the rebuild as well. Not much bandwidth for reflection, in other words.

Last week, though, thinking about September 4, 2010, but also February 22nd, 2011 in particular, I experienced a huge sadness and grief for all that has been lost: lives, livelihoods, sense of place — a totality that I described, a few years back, as a geography of loss.

The Poem:All of which led me to turn to Leaving The Red Zone, an anthology of poems from the Canterbury earthquakes. Fiona Farrell’s poem, The Poem That is Like A City, was already in my mind as I did so. The poem forms the epilogue of the anthology, a place of honour in and of itself, because such a poem (imho) must necessarily capture a sense of the anthology—and by implication its subject matter—as a whole.

The Poem That is Like A City does exactly that. As I tweeted at the time, it’s “…clever & tragic & apt. Some of the lines broke my heart all over again.”

And the poem is clever—oh-so-wonderfully clever, in my humble opinion—in the way it uses the structure and forms of language to create the form and structure of the city. So we have “…a CBD and CEOs and a thousand//acronyms whirring like wheels. This//poem is going places.” A little later: “It also has small//prepositions where people pause, drink//coffee and read the paper. They go to//and from and sit before and behind.”

I love the poem’s extended simile of city and poem, and the wit and cleverness with which Fiona Farrell has woven the two together, and the way the love of language informs the whole. I think it’s awesome.

The poem does not stop, though, with the awesome set up in the first stanza. “The poem jolts at the caesura and all//the words slide sideways”, tipping the reader into the subsequent stanzas, where the city as words and the words as city, do indeed “fall off the edges of their white page.” It is tragic, and tore at my heart, remembering: “The children//who were learning how to say hullo/tap good bye good bye in all their//voices, reaching in the dark for the//mother tongue.”

Because this is not just about poetry and the use of language: this is real. The English-language students were real, caught in the collapse of the CTV building and still alive, waiting for a rescue that did not come soon enough to save them. “There is no word in//English for this. No word in any//city.”

I cried last week, reading Fiona’s words and remembering the students and all the 185 who died. As I weep again, typing this. It’s painful; it hurts to remember. Far worse, though, to feel nothing, and to forget. The poem captures something of that, because it “is palimpsest.” As we, the people of Christchurch, are palimpsest: written over with the new while the ghostly past is everpresent—a sense Fiona also captures in the third stanza with the ghostly city that rises by night, where “Cars//boom hollow on a phantom avenue,//cups fill with froth and nothing…”

The Poem That is Like A City is the epilogue to Leaving The Red Zone. It also has its own epilogue, which expresses exactly how I feel, having lived these nine years and their geography of loss:

Ths pm is lka brkn ctyall its wds rsmshd tosyllbls.

Each syllbla brck.

A brck that was hurled through the window of our collective heart.

I have called The Poem That is Like A City clever, and so it is. Yet if the poem were clever alone, I doubt it would speak to me so strongly. The reason I also call it apt, is not just because it captures the grief of the earthquakes, but because it does so with tremendous insight and pathos and heart.

So thank you, Fiona Farrell: first for writing the poem and secondly for allowing me share it here.

"THE HEIR OF NIGHT by Helen Lowe is a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world."--Robin Hobb

Thornspell

Jacket art by Antonio Javier Caparo

Thornspell is my first novel and is published by Knopf (Random House Children's Books, USA). It won the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2009 for Best Novel: Young Adult and was a Storylines Childrens' Literature Trust Notable Book 2009.